Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

Then a long wait in the otherwise empty room. It was likely past midnight when Sharpe and Clayton entered. Clayton was the former football player for the Bulldogs, the tough one who’d driven his fists into Ellsworth. Sharpe was older, gray hair, thin, with a fondness for suits that appeared more expensive than a police detective should be able to afford.

  “Quite a night for you, Officer Rakestraw,” Sharpe said. Rake was sitting in a chair opposite a small table. Clayton stood directly across from Rake, while Sharpe stood to the side, very close to Rake, easy striking distance.

  Rake just stared at them, waiting for a question. It had not escaped his attention that this room had no observation window.

  “Why don’t we start from the beginning,” Sharpe said. “Let’s start with what Mr. Prescott said to you when you allegedly picked up the phone in your house, when he allegedly called you.”

  Rake rubbed at his chin. It was scratchy now and needed a shave.

  He asked, “Which one of you shot Underhill?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Underhill. That night by the foundry. Only thing I haven’t figured out for a certain is why, though it was obviously one of two things. Maybe it was because he went back to you and asked for more money once he realized how important that girl had been. He hadn’t known when he showed up to get her out of town that she was connected to a congressman. She mouthed off to him in the car, he slapped her, then she ran off. Then the junior Prescott finds her, snaps, shoots her, and when Underhill tracks them down he finds he’s now dealing with a dead body. He gets rid of it, not doing a particularly good job, and now that he knows just how high-rent a crowd he’s helping out, he decides that whatever fee he’d agreed to isn’t enough, so he asks for more. And you decide he’s too much trouble.

  “Or,” he continued, “maybe it was because you realized I was getting too close to him, and you needed to erase the trail. So, which of those two was it? And which one of you pulled the trigger?”

  Sharpe smiled. Only now, though. During that long statement, the two detectives’ faces had been cold and taut.

  “I’m afraid the stress of this evening is getting to you, Officer Rakestraw.”

  “It’s making you do very unwise things,” Clayton said, making a show of folding his thick arms in front of his chest.

  Rake was not cuffed. He scooted his chair back just a tad, so he’d have room to work with in a moment.

  “Clayton, you can fold those arms as tight as you want, but if you even think of taking a swing at me like you did that Negro farmer, your partner will be picking up your teeth as keepsakes.”

  Sharpe laughed. “You think you’re holding a winning hand, don’t you? You’re about to be booked for murder.”

  “People who are booked for murder have a habit of talking, a lot. They talk at their trial an amazing amount. They say all kinds of things that some people would prefer not get said.”

  Clayton swung. He got Rake in the cheekbone. The fact that Rake had been expecting it hardly meant that it didn’t hurt. But it did mean that he rolled to his right quickly, flowing with the punch, his ass sliding off the chair and his right knee landing against the floor. Which gave him plenty of leverage as he stood back up, lifting the table with him, and using it as a battering ram as he flew into Clayton like a drilling lineman running into pads. Clayton tripped backward, the table slamming him into the wall. Rake heard the wind rush out of the detective. Then Rake let go of the table and hit the bastard square in the nose, twice, a third time, the back of the man’s skull hitting the wall each time and Rake’s hand getting increasingly wet with blood. Rake was gearing up for another swing when someone or something hit him and he was on the floor, and trying to get up, and seeing all kinds of feet coming at him, some running and some lifting themselves high above so they could plant themselves low.

  An indeterminate amount of time later, Rake was sitting in the same room. This time there was no table and his hands were cuffed, one cuff each, to the chair legs behind him.

  It had occurred to him, just before he lost consciousness, that the glaring weakness in his plan was that they could just kill him and no longer worry about his ability to talk. He was still alive, at the moment, but his lip was busted and one of his eyes was swollen shut. And regardless of how many of Clayton’s teeth he’d punched out, he’d also lost one of his own.

  He would have killed for a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin.

  He still had no idea how many people on the force had been involved in the effort to remove Lily Ellsworth from life and any living person’s memory. If there were as many as he was now beginning to fear—the entire police department except himself ?—then Sharpe was right that Rake had no cards to play. Or maybe it was only a few dirty cops, but those few were still more than powerful enough to swat into nothingness the buzzing annoyance that was Denny Rakestraw.

  The door opened and in walked a cop in a spotless uniform. He was tall and thick, an older man but, unlike Dunlow, one who had managed to keep himself in shape. He was holding about six inches of folders and paperwork. He looked down at Rake for a moment, then glanced out the open door and told someone named Kenny to fetch another chair. A chair was handed to him by the unseen Kenny, and the door was closed, and Chief Jenkins sat down opposite one of the most vexing officers in his city.

  “Discretion is not one of your strengths, Officer Rakestraw.” Jenkins had blue eyes and a ruddy face that had spent years in the sun. Those eyes still looked youthful but the skin around them was lined with wrinkles that stretched nearly to the gray hair above his ears.

  “No, sir.” Talking hurt. He clenched his stomach and forced the words out. “I felt it wasn’t in my best interest to be quiet tonight.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s the people doing things wrong who want to stay quiet about it. Sir.” He breathed. He didn’t think his ribs were broken, but they weren’t particularly happy either. “No questions, no whispers, no one bothering them. Being loud is the last thing they want.”

  Jenkins regarded him.

  “A United States congressman has boarded a plane for Atlanta,” the chief finally said. “By the time he lands, he is going to want to know exactly why his son is dead.” He opened one of the folders and flipped through it. Rake wasn’t a good enough upside-down reader to know what Jenkins was looking at, plus his one “good” eye was getting fuzzy.

  “It’s not a very palatable story, sir. And I’ve been saving the worst parts for you.”

  Jenkins looked up from his paperwork. “How’s that?”

  Rake had been gambling on the fact that the reform-minded Jenkins, who had moved to arrest the cops who ran the numbers operations a few years back and who had thrown the Kluxers out of the police union, would not side against Rake if he heard the whole story. The fact that the chief himself was in this room made Rake feel all the more strongly that he was right.

  So Rake mentioned that he’d had suspicions about his own partner and thus had gone this alone. He told the truth about how he’d questioned Silas Prescott a few nights ago, and how he’d confronted the man tonight. When Jenkins asked how Rake had learned certain things, he did not mention his collaboration with Boggs, afraid to touch that third rail, instead making it sound as if he had picked up tips from Negro informants.

  “You did a lot of things wrong, Officer Rakestraw.”

  “I realize that, sir.”

  “And you’re laying quite a mess at my feet.”

  “I’m sorry for that, sir. But the way I see it is, there are cops here you wish you didn’t have, and there are cops you wish you had more of. I’m the second kind.”

  “You don’t lack for confidence.”

  “Probably just got hit in the head a few too many times.”

  “Don’t let that become a habit.”

  “Sir, there are a lot of things I’m not good at. Bu
t I think I’m a good cop. And I was a good soldier. If you think it’s best for you and your department for me to go away and keep my mouth shut, I can do that. But if you think it would be best to have me stick around and keep my mouth shut, I figure I can do that, too.”

  Jenkins drummed his fingers on the desk. “If there’s anything you’ve been fixing to ask me, you’d best do so now.”

  “Sir, if you do decide I’m to remain an officer here, I’d surely appreciate a new partner.”

  Jenkins folded his arms across his chest. “Funny you should mention that. We’ve been trying to reach Officer Dunlow ever since we brought you in here, but he’s nowhere to be found. Any clue where he might be?”

  37

  THE DAY AFTER burying Dunlow, Boggs and Smith had reported for duty like any other. Despite suffering the headache of his life, Boggs had no bruises on his face, as the bottle had hit the back of his skull. His ribs ached, and only through prayer and great force of will had he been able to walk without leaning over like the invalid he felt he was.

  They tried and failed to reach the Ellsworth family. Various calls placed to different churches in Peacedale had brought them only bits of information. Their messages were routed to different phoneless households by messenger or letter or gossip or God’s will. The Ellsworths had fled Peacedale, perhaps to some relations of Emma Mae in a county farther east. Or perhaps, Boggs wondered, they were trying to go to Chicago after all, even though the white cops had stolen all the money Lily had sent them, the hush money her father had paid out in hopes that it would undo his history. Undo her. Perhaps the few surviving Ellsworths would make it up north, would wind up living in an apartment only a few blocks away from some of Boggs’s relations who had also made the migration. Or perhaps they would spend the remainder of their days as they had lived them, barely scraping by beneath the boot of another white landowner, a different town and a different county but the same unbreakable rules.

  Two days later, no one had come to arrest or fire Boggs.

  He had only spoken to Rake once more since that awful night, and briefly: Rake called simply to say that they’d been right about Prescott, but that the truth would never be acknowledged. When Boggs asked why not, Rake had rushed off the phone, promising to explain soon.

  The official story, which ran in the back pages of the local paper only a few hours after that phone call, was that the only son of Congressman Prescott had committed suicide for reasons unknown. It would not do to invade the family’s privacy, although a few writers pointed out that the young man had recently presided over a failed restaurant and had yet to make a success of himself the way his father and grandfather had. The governor and mayor offered their condolences, but otherwise this was a private matter.

  Boggs heard conflicting rumors that Rakestraw was going to be fired, then that he was going to be promoted. And he heard that the other white cops hated Rake almost as much as they hated the colored officers. Whatever bargain the man had struck, he’d won one thing but lost something else.

  Lucius wasn’t sure how long it would take for him to relax. If he would ever relax. One day, surely, someone would find Dunlow’s body. Even if that didn’t happen, at the very least someone would find his incinerated car and track it to the missing cop. Even if that didn’t happen, surely Dunlow had friends wondering where he was. He was not the type to run off. Boggs wasn’t sure how many people knew that Dunlow was coming after him that night or if it had been a random attack, didn’t know which accomplices might make the next strike.

  Perhaps, if he was very lucky, months and then years would pass, and he would eventually conclude that he had gotten away with it. Then he might be able to exhale.

  Until then, the uncertainty was a clamp around his rib cage, squeezing him every day.

  One afternoon he walked into the basement precinct an hour early, intending to get a head start on some paperwork. He was surprised to find McInnis down there. After a brief hello, the sergeant—in an untucked blue shirt and khakis—told him, “I received a rather agitated call from the Peacedale sheriff a few days ago. Forgot to mention that.”

  “What was he agitated about, sir?”

  “He seemed to believe that two Negroes who claimed to be Atlanta police officers had come down to his little town to stir up trouble.”

  “That’s quite a story, sir.”

  McInnis sat down on a desk. “It is. I reminded him that Atlanta police would have had no jurisdiction in Peacedale, and that besides, a Negro officer would know better than to stick his nose in a town like that. I told him any Negro who caused trouble down there could surely be handled by a big man like him.”

  Boggs was having trouble figuring out McInnis’s angle. After a moment of indecision, he realized his own silence looked rude. So he said, “Thank you, sir.”

  McInnis nodded to one of the chairs. “Have a seat. Now, have you ever thought to wonder why I was given the honor of leading you Negro officers?”

  “I’ve wondered it, sir.”

  “Then I have a story for you. Have you ever heard tell of the Rust Division?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Couple of years ago, I was one of the cops given the task of investigating the Atlanta police officers who were deeply involved in numbers running. Not just the ones who were involved—cause that was damn near everyone—but the ones who were in charge. It wasn’t the kind of job any cop would have asked for, and I don’t know why they gave it to me. Thirteen cops lost their jobs because of what I had to do. Four went to jail, and they’re still there now. Another nine could have gone—should have, in my opinion—but the evidence wasn’t strong enough to convict. It was strong enough for them to lose their badges and pensions, though.”

  “They deserved it.”

  McInnis grinned. “Things do seem awfully black and white to you, don’t they?”

  “I just mean—”

  “I don’t care what you mean. My point is, I made a lot of enemies. Didn’t have a choice, though, did I? If I’d done a bad job, I would’ve been demoted, or just sent to rot at some desk. If I’d done a really bad job, it might have looked like I was colluding with the very men I was investigating, in which case I might have gone to jail myself. So I did a damned excellent job. And lo and behold, when a sergeant was needed to watch over our Negro recruits, I got that job, too.”

  Then he explained what Boggs had already learned through Rake: the Rust Division of cops who’d been laid off but were still available for dirty work, for a price.

  “This is unofficial. But I’ve heard enough to believe it. ‘Rust Division,’ I kind of like that, a play on cop, copper, but it’s old dirty copper so it’s got some rust to it. Rather creative for cops.” He shook his head. “Except copper doesn’t actually rust.”

  “So . . . what sort of things do these ex-cops do?”

  “Maybe they don’t exist. Maybe it’s just a bogeyman story told to keep other cops on their toes. To know that there’s a parallel police force out there, off the books, small but operating with impunity because they’re being watched out for and paid by some very high-ranking officials.”

  “Who are these officials?”

  “That’s far beyond your pay grade.”

  “But you’re saying these Rust people are still out there. And the cops who control them, they’re out there, too.” He and Rake had concluded it was Sharpe and Clayton, the two cops who had roughly interrogated Ellsworth and then tried to beat Rake into nothingness afterward, who likely hired and then eliminated Underhill. Rake had pointed Chief Jenkins in their direction, but there had been no arrests that Boggs knew of. “They’re still on the force, drawing pay.”

  “Which should keep all of us on our toes, shouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.” After a pause, Lucius asked, “Why did you remove Underhill’s name from my report? Why not call more attention to this phantom divisio
n if it’s killing people?”

  “Number one, we can’t prove they killed anyone. Number two, we are talking about men I tried to put away, men who should have gone to jail after the lottery sting but instead only got fired, and for my trouble, I got sent to the basement of a colored YMCA. So perhaps I am lazy, perhaps I am immoral, or perhaps I am merely loath to reengage battles I’m not permitted to win. And, though this may shock you, Officer Boggs, I’ve been impressed by you. I think you’re becoming nearly adept at this job. I think you may well become good at it one day. And I think that, if certain people in APD had realized that you were looking into a man like Brian Underhill, your already low odds of surviving would have plummeted yet further, and perhaps I don’t think that’s fair.”

  Boggs needed a moment to make sense of this. “You changed my report to protect me?”

  “As I said, shocking.” McInnis rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell is happening to me down here. The good news for you is, I don’t think you have much to worry about with those Rust boys. What happened to Underhill has no doubt scared them. But what you do need to be worried about—far more worried than you seem to be—is pretty much every other white cop in this city. If you and your partner decide to take on any investigations of your own again, you will at least be fired, and, at the most, whichever white cop you piss off will decide to permanently remove you from his list of problems. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I intend to be a cop in this city for a long while, Officer Boggs. And if you do, too, then we’re going to have to find a way to put up with each other.”

  The next afternoon, Boggs was walking home from the grocer’s, past a row of vibrant orange lilies, when he heard a car door close. He looked up and saw Rakestraw crossing the street. He hadn’t heard or seen the car drive up—Rake had been sitting there waiting.

  They met in front of the reverend’s house. They stood in the shade, the low branches of the oak nearly touching their heads.